THIS TIME of year more than any other, I get bombarded with comments regarding “bad” birds — the ones that steal other birds’ eggs, eat all your bird seed or have the unmitigated nerve to poop on your patio furniture.

Some well-meaning nature lovers, it seems, pigeonhole birds into two categories. Besides the aforementioned “bad” birds are the “good” birds.” You know the ones — they are so sweet and kind, and they flit around the backyard for no other reason than to make us feel good.

After a talk I gave for the Bergen County Audubon Society the other night, a man approached me and asked: “How could your group put a blue jay on your newsletter? They’re so mean. They eat baby birds and eggs!”

I replied: “So what? I bet you do, too.”

That did not go over well, and I should really think on revisiting my notes on public relations, but it is nevertheless true. When it comes to wildlife, why do we expect some kind of morality above what we expect of ourselves?

There are folks who go into their backyards to chase off hawks that may want to prey upon their favorite little “good” birds that are attracted to their feeders.

I am sorry to tell them that aside from looking like a crazy person by waving a broom in the air, it is illegal to harass a raptor — or any bird for that matter.

After all, like you and me, the raptor is just trying to make a living, and isn’t that why they call them birdfeeders anyway? Aren’t we really just providing a different kind of bird food?

As for those “good” birds, just about all of them eat the beautiful butterflies that we all love. A good friend tells me that northern cardinals eat the pipevine butterfly caterpillars she is trying to raise. So is a cardinal now a “bad” bird?

It is sad that we make villains of creatures that through no fault of their own are either out of place due to man’s interference or are just doing what nature intended.

Who’s at fault?

Take the lowly European starling and the English house sparrow. Yes, they are problems because they have hurt our native bird species, especially cavity nesters like bluebirds. But are they bad? They didn’t just decide on their own to show up here one day and take up residence. Man, in his infinite wisdom, thought it would be a good idea to import them.

Are they a problem? Yes. Are they evil? No.

The list goes on. The wild turkey is a good example of how a magnificent bird that was just about gone from the New Jersey landscape is now thought of as a pest, “Oh, those stupid turkeys,” someone said to me recently. “They chase my cats around the yard.”

Brown-headed cowbirds are a favorite whipping-bird, especially among birders; they pose a serious problem to nesting birds such as warblers because the cowbirds lay their eggs in the warblers’ nests, leaving the warblers to hatch the eggs and raise their young.

But the cowbirds are here because when people decided to cut down most of our forests, we changed the landscape from an Eastern woodlands habitat to an open habitat. Cowbirds’ fault? I don’t think so.

And now we come to maybe the most hated bird in New Jersey, the Canada goose. Yes, they have become a major problem, especially at airports, lakes and schoolyards.
But instead of landscaping with native shrubs, trees and tall grasses that deter geese, we insist on creating places that the geese love — like large corporate lawns or parks with huge expanses of low-growing non-native grass made for no reason other than that is what someone thinks a park should look like.

Typically, the home owners who complain the most about Canada geese love that Kentucky bluegrass in their front yard. And they wonder why the geese keep coming.

Does that make the Canada goose the most evil creature alive? Or does it just show how much we have to learn about living with wildlife? I remember how people used to look up in awe as they watched a flock of migrating Canadas cruise overhead. How times change.

The answer to this complicated question is that there are no “good” or “bad birds.” Wildlife does not exist to either please or displease the human race. That concept is just man’s arrogance. Calling wildlife “bad” just cheapens its existence.

We owe it to all creatures to learn a little more about them and how better to live with them before we create a creature that is looked at as “bad.” There are no bad birds; the human race has reserved the title of “bad” for a few of its own kind.